Dear Editor,
Coming a bit late on this issue, but matters not. Under the heading of Stabroek News February 26th, 2013: “How would they have reacted…?,” the outspoken and resolute Ruel Johnson in reference to the calypso by Lester Charles that triggered the prohibiting of his and other calypsos being played on NCN, in a somewhat amusing bewilderment asked: If it is that freedom house is rattled by that, how would they have reacted to the poem “Not I with this torn shirt” by Martin Carter? My humble take on this is, they would not have been disturbed or bothered none! It’s all a question of looking at things; of their effect/impact; of their perceptions of ordinary folks- the working class. That among the masses there is a very small gathering of those who indulge in that type of Carter’s poetry – such sophistication to figure it out. Thus they judge it- and to a great extent correctly so -to be high-flown, over the heads of the everyday people. The paltry few and those of higher stature who do, they don’t count and are least worried about-no sweat. That’s how it works in the inner recess of their minds.
But not so with calypso! It’s all a different ball game, where the calypso must be couched in a style designed to reach and stimulate the masses- those ordinary folks, the same cloth from which the calypsonian is invariable cut, be it slick satire or blunt and harsh lyrics, and which for response must avoid too much sophistication, less complication and misinterpretation from skin to bone, and as every-day folks like to say: “easy lesson good fuh dunce”. Hence what is said about who, what, where, when and how is all crystal clear for all and sundry, nothing hidden, nothing to figure out. Therein lies the fullness of it all. Always and always, inexorably always it is the response of those least cared about- the masses that grab the establishment’s attention. It wasn’t by accident that calypso is referred to as the small man newspaper; the calypsonian being the reporter.
And this is why they would always, always get jittery when the small man newspaper “Skin them up”.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
